Thursday, September 19, 2013

Obama and the Velcro presidency -- Sept. 19, 2013 column

Thirty years ago, Democratic Rep. Patricia Schroeder
of Colorado said President Ronald Reagan had perfected the “Teflon-coated
presidency.”

Reagan could shed scandal the way Teflon allows eggs
to slide from a frying pan, she griped.

It was a great line but a bit of a stretch. Reagan
wasn’t as popular in office as all that. He became a conservative icon only in
retirement. Once, in a period of high unemployment in 1983, his job approval
rating dropped to 35 percent.

But he bounced back. Reagan’s genial manner
connected with voters even when corruption and other misdeeds afflicted his
administration. At this point in Reagan’s second term -- September 1985 -- 60
percent of Americans approved of the job he was doing, according to the Gallup
presidential tracking poll.

Sixty percent is hardly stellar, but it would be a
welcome gain for President Barack Obama, whose job approval rating hovers
around 45 percent, roughly the same as his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the
first September of his second term.

Reagan may
have had a Teflon coat, but later presidents have seemed wrapped in Velcro. In
these hyper-partisan times, both Obama and Bush have faced blame no matter what
they did. Just last Monday, when a gunman killed 12 people at the Washington
Navy Yard, Obama went forward with a speech criticizing Republicans on the
economy.

The extent of the carnage wasn’t known when Obama, at
the Old Executive Office Building, said, “We are confronting yet another mass
shooting.” After speaking for about two minutes
on the tragic event, he turned to his prepared remarks and criticized
Republicans for threatening a government shutdown that could imperil the
economy.

Republicans blasted the president as callous, but
had he scrapped his planned remarks and focused on, say, tougher gun control
measures, he would have been accused of using the massacre for political advantage.
He can’t win.

Reagan never had to worry about opponents wielding
lightning-fast tweets. Even before Obama was criticized for keeping to his
schedule during a tragedy, critics raked him over the blogosphere for his handling
of Syria. Before that, opponents eviscerated him for his health care plan. It stops
insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing
conditions and helps millions of Americans get affordable health insurance, but
most people don’t know that.

A majority of people still disapprove of Obamacare,
and about one in four say lawmakers should do whatever they can to make it
fail, according to the latest Pew Research Center and USA Today poll.

Obama seems to think that Americans are reasonable
people and will see the advantages of his plan. He has never yet used the most
power piece of real estate he controls – the Oval Office – for a televised
address to the nation on health care. Why not?

It’s hard to imagine Great Communicator Reagan missing
that opportunity. Reagan set the record for televised Oval Office addresses,
speaking to the nation from the big desk 34 times. By this time in his presidency, he had spoken two dozen times from the Oval
Office.

The Obama team has no shortage of tweeters who tweet,
but the boss has given only two prime-time, Oval Office addresses. They were three
years ago, one about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and one on the end of
combat operations in Iraq.

Obama’s predecessor
also was no fan of the Oval Office address. Bush gave six major Oval Office
addresses during his two terms.

Some Obama advisers dismiss the Oval Office address
as a relic of the last century. Yes, times have changed since Reagan could
announce a prime-time speech, assured that the three major TV networks would
carry it and that his message would dominate the next day’s news.

But the Oval Office is still the most powerful room in
America. Obama apparently prefers walking down the hall and standing at the
lectern in the East Room, as if he’s at a news conference when he isn’t.

My guess is Obama may yet resort to another Oval
Office speech, but his delay has cost him. He gets zero credit for slowing the
rate of health care cost inflation and all the blame for businesses’ deciding
to stop providing health insurance to employees.

He promised people who
get insurance through their jobs that they’d be able to keep their plans. He apparently
did not foresee that some big companies would use the changing insurance landscape
as an opportunity to cut back on benefits.

Obama doesn’t have a Teflon presidency, and it will
take more than tweets to unwrap his Velcro coat. The Oval Office is waiting.